2015 Book Competition semi-finalists announced

Negative Capability Press is pleased to announce the ten semi-finalists for our 2015 Book Competition: 

Kate Angus, So Late to the Party

Kate Angus is the founding editor of Augury Books. Her work has appeared in Indiana Review, Subtropics, Court Green, The Awl, The Millions, Verse Daily, The Rumpus, Gulf Coast, Best New Poets 2010 and Best New Poets 2014, among other places. She is the recipient of A Room of Her Own Foundation’s “Orlando” Prize, The Southeast Review’s Narrative Nonfiction prize and an Artist’s Residency on the Wildfjords trail in Iceland. A former Writer in Residence at Interlochen Arts Academy, she currently lives in New York where she teaches at Gotham Writers Workshop, LIM College and privately. She serves as the Creative Writing Advisor for The Mayapple Center for Arts and Humanities and is a guest literary curator for Pen and Brush.

Arpine Konyalian Grenier, The Silent G

Arpine Konyalian Grenier received graduate degrees from the American University of Beirut and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, New York. In addition to four collections, her work and translations have appeared in a number of publications including Columbia Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Fence and Big Bridge.  She says that with the manuscript, The Silent G, "I am after syntax that may help me embrace the world of now, as survival alone is not enough."

Nancy Chen Long, Light Into Bodies

Nancy Chen Long received a BS in Electrical Engineering Technology and MBA She worked as an electrical engineer, software consultant, and project manager, and more recently earned her MFA. To encourage interest in poetry in her community, she serves as a volunteer with the local Writers Guild, offering free poetry workshops and facilitating creative writing and feedback groups. To give back to the writing community at-large, she writes poetry-book reviews and interviews poets at readwritepoetry.blogspot.com and she coordinates a reading series. You’ll find her recent and forthcoming work in Boxcar Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, RHINO, and other journals. Her chapbook Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone was published in 2013 by Red Bird Chapbooks.

Joseph Lisowski, From Death's Silence

From 1986 to 1996, Joseph Lisowski was Professor of English at the University of the Virgin Islands. He taught at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina from 2002-2014. He is now retired. Some poetry chapbooks include JB, a dialogue in poem form between John the Baptist and King Herod (PoetryRepairShop), Stashu Kapinski Strikes Out (Rank Stranger Press), Fatherhood at Fifty (Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry), Sketches of an Island Life (dpi press), Art Lessons (Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry), Stashu Kapinski Gets Lucky (Pudding House Press), and Stashu Kapinski Looks for Love (erbacce-press, UK).

After growing up under the shadow of Heppenstall Steel Mill in Pittsburgh, Pa., Joseph Lisowski has spent much of his life near the sea, including 10 years in St. Thomas, VI., which serves as the setting for his three published mystery novels, Full Body Rub, Looking for Lisa, and Looking for Lauren. 

He has lived many lives: as a wide-eyed boy, a keeper of keys, a beach comber… (There are poems somewhere commemorating them all.) He recently won the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Teacher of the Year Award (2013). His most recent full length book of poetry is Stashu Kapinski Dreams of Glory (Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013).

Matthew Nickel, The Route to Cacharel

Matthew Nickel, is a Mid-Hudson Valley native. He earned his Ph.D in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Misericordia University in Northeast Pennsylvania. He has edited numerous anthologies of poetry, including Kentucky: Poets of Place. His most recent books include The Leek Soup Songbook, Des Hymnagistes Press 2015) and Hemingway's Dark Night: Dark Night: Catholic Influences and Intertextualities in the Work of Ernest Hemingway (New Street Communications 2013).

Emily Schulten, The Way a Wound Becomes a Scar

Emily’s first book, REST IN BLACK HAW, appeared in 2009 from New Plains Press. Her work has appeared in such national journals as Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, Salamander, and New Orleans Review, among others. This manuscript was a finalist for the 2013 Hudson Prize and a semi-finalist for the 2013 Brittingham and Pollak Poetry Prizes. 

Steven Teref, The Foreign Object

Steven Teref is the translator of Ana Ristovic's The Soft Zero: Selected Poems (Zephyr Press) and Novica Tadic's Assembly (Host Publications, 2009). His poetry and translations have recently appeared in The Volta, Asymptote, and International Poetry Review, with work forthcoming in Negative Capability, Tarpaulin Sky, and Aufgabe.

Karrie Waarala, Pierce & Brand's World of Dangerous Wonders

Karrie Waarala's work has appeared in journals such as Iron Horse Literary Review, PANK, The Collagist, Southern Indiana Review, and Vinyl. She is a poetry editor for the museum of americana and holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at University of Southern Maine. Recipient of the 2012 Pocataligo Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net finalist, and a multiple Pushcart nominee, Karrie has also received critical acclaim for her one-woman show, LONG GONE: A Poetry Sideshow, which is based on her collection of circus poems. She really wishes she could tame tigers and swallow swords.

Shanti Weiland, Sister Nun

Shanti Weiland is a poet by nature but sometimes enjoys a visit to the other team's dugout, where she dabbles in prose. She received her BA in English from the University of California, Davis and later moved to the desert, pursuing a Creative Writing MA at Northern Arizona University. She then traveled to the humid and friendly south, where she earned a PhD in Poetry from the University of Southern Mississippi. She’s recently been published in Toad the Journal, Bop Dead City, Front Porch Review, and Third Wednesday, and has poems forthcoming in Mad Hatter’s Review and Two Cities Review. She currently teaches writing and literature at The University of Alabama and lives in Birmingham with her partner and a menagerie of pets. You can find her online at shantiweiland.com.

Shanti Weiland’s  Sister Nun is about a woman who joins a Buddhist convent in response to a broken heart. The manuscript begins with the speaker, who names herself “Sister Nun,” escaping over the wall of the convent even though she has, in no way, been held captive. During the rest of the manuscript (and the rest of her life, which spans over 215 years, not including her casual second-coming) she explores her identity, sexuality, and the path to enlightenment by wrestling alligators, vacationing in hell, and traveling through time and space.